This year at White Station Junior High Camp, I was blessed by being able to teach the Sermon on the Mount in 4 sessions over the week. With input from many people, including Randy Harris and his book Living Jesus, we had a great time unpacking Jesus's teaching. I want to recommend Harris's book to anyone who reads this blog...it is worth your time and it will challenge all of us to take Jesus' words seriously. I will post four times over the next few days because I promised the students I would give them the content of the class. So, here is the first of four...

Class Objective:Before we can ever do what Jesus asks us to do, we must realize and live in the reality that we are blessed by God to be a blessing to others. In this first of four sessions, the class will discover the way God, through Jesus, has chosen to bless us before he requires anything from us.

Teaching: Read Matthew 5:1-16“Poor in spirit” is a term with deep meaning, it refers to a hebrew term “anawim” which is very important in understanding Jesus’ connection with these people. The “anawim” are a specific group of people who were left behind during the Exile of Israel. Now, understand that Exile is when another nation comes to your nation and takes back to their nation all of the useful people who can work, become wives, who were deemed valuable to the enemy nation. Those who were left were “anawim,” that is that they were the group who were deemed un-useful, unworthy, un-valuable - the pathetic, pitiful, and worthless. Jesus tells the people, as he tells us who sometimes feel this way, You are blessed by God in your “anawim” experiences, that is when you really understand and own the Kingdom of God.

God provides blessings for people who are experiencing:

Mourning - sadness from the loss of loved ones, emptiness from grief

Meekness - the opposite of power, a meek being is one being controlled

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (that is for the right way of doing things and treating people - this is often combined with justice and peace in the Old Testament)

Merciful - compassionate, forgiving, showing pity and empathy

Pure in heart - not so much about purity as it is about having a single purpose in life. Not a divided heart, but in a way a whole heart.

Peacemakers - those who refuse to participate in the drama of this world

Persecuted - those who are hurt by others because of their practice of right living.

Jesus makes the bold statement that it is in these times, given these circumstances that we most genuinely feel loved by God. In his words, these people are comforted and filled and they inherit the earth, see God, receive mercy, and are to rejoice and be glad. Jesus is telling those who will listen: Let me describe the “good life” for you...Yes - there are competing definitions of the “good life” in our world, but to Jesus the “good life” boils down to one very important aspect: Do you feel blessed (or loved) by God?

And Jesus also shows us his leaning...when we understand that we are not good enough, can’t perform well enough, when the world we live in becomes uncomfortable, when we know these things... there is room for God to show us His love and care.

So much so that Jesus calls us salt and light... our feeling of blessing (or being loved) is to be shared with others)

SALT - gets its name by how it tastes. If you pick up a hard substance that does not taste like salt, then it is a rock. Salt gets its name by what it does to bland food - it makes it salty, and therefore takes what is bland, dull, and boring and adds zest, life, and flavor to it. Salt was so valuable it was used as money in the time of Jesus.

LIGHT - tends to work the best where it is dark. The idea here is to see the shine of the lights of Memphis as you drive in closer on I40, or to be startled in the middle of the night and reach for that light switch or lamp that reveals the contents of your room.

Strikingly, if we are SALT and LIGHT, then we are those things in a world that Jesus characterizes as bland and dark. Our presence is felt on this world as we add to it, enhance it, and make it better. Jesus is telling us to take our blessing and invade the world around us with it...

Challenge:You are valuable. God has not only placed his value in you from the beginning, but has given you gifts and trophies at the weirdest moments in your life. Think of a time when you felt like a loser, you were mourning a significant loss, you were being made fun of because you decided to keep the peace and not pick a side, or you decided to back down instead of fight.

How did God display to you that you were valuable and that your choices were pleasing to him? How does this thought, this moment, this memory move you to worship God and to trust that God will take care of you?

Pick someone out, a person of the same gender, and let them know that God has placed value in them and upon them. Think of someone who you know needs that word right now...and remember that God thinks you are valuable, and that gives you the freedom and ability to know that others are valuable to God as well.